Hey everyone! It's that time of year again- that's right, It's the Boston Independent Film Festival! It is going on this weekend at the Somerville and Brattle Theatres, and I will be posting reviews of all the movies I see the day after I see them. Of course, there are far more movies playing than I could ever cover, and many of them are fantastic films. So if you get a chance, go out and see some of the awesome stuff that's playing. This first article cover the psychological thriller Always Shine and the Iranian horror film Under the Shadow (زیر سایه‎‎).

​Always Shine

Anna (Mackenzie Davis) is an aspiring actress living in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, her career hasn’t gone anywhere yet, and she’s desperately looking for her big break. Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) is also a Los Angeles actress, although her career is starting to take off after starring in several horror movies and art films. The two women used to be good friends, but the years have taken their toll on their relationship; Anna is jealous of Beth’s success, while Beth has grown frustrated with Anna’s increasingly hostile personality while simultaneously feeling guilty of her own success because she perceives Anna as the better actress. The two of them decide to repair their friendship with a weekend getaway to Big Sur, but once there they realize that the chasms between them may be too wide to bridge, and things only get worse from there…

Always Shine is a psychological thriller by director Sophia Takal. In many ways it is an homage to the classics of the genre, such as works by Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. However, it’s also an interesting commentary upon the perception of women in modern society. Sophia Takal conducted a Q&A session after the screening via Skype, and she talked about how much of the film was inspired by her own difficulty with not living up to what she perceives that society expects of her as a women, of not living up to the feminine ideal. Fittingly, both lead actresses give incredibly strong performances, with Beth and Anna respectively embodying a feminine ideal and a more aggressive female personality.

Although I can’t say that it is an amazing thriller movie, Always Shine is an excellent commentary on gender roles and expectations. You may be disappointed if you go into hoping for Hitchcock or Lynch, but if you want an intelligent social commentary than you’re in the right place.

Grade: B-

Under the Shadow (زیر سایه‎‎​)

Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her family are living in Tehran during the height of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. She studied as a doctor before the Iranian Revolution, but due to being a member of a now-banned political group while at university, she was unable to complete her medical studies. Instead, she now focuses on raising her daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi). After a turning point in the war, her husband is drafter by the army and missiles begin raining down on Tehran, though Shideh stubbornly refuses to leave. Soon though, Shideh realizes it’s not just bombs that she has to worry about…​Under the Shadow is a horror movie created by Iranian director Babak Anvari. In many ways, my thought about this film are quite similar to that of Always Shine; Under the Shadow is not a great horror movie. Most of its frights come from cheap (albeit effective) jump scares, nothing you haven’t seen in every other horror movie. But it is very interesting in the social and political issues it examines, including the role of women in Iranian society, criticisms of the Iranian government, and the subtle, creeping terror of war which goes beyond soldiers and bombs.

If you’re looking for an awesome horror movie, than maybe look for something else. But if you want an interesting social commentary featuring a nation which we so rarely see films from here in the United States, than Under the Shadow is the film for you.

Grade: B-

You can check out more coverage of this year's festival here and here.

Sing Street is a coming-of-age, musical movie that defies clichés. It's directed by John Carney, creator of Once and Begin Again, and focuses on a young boy named Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) growing up Dublin during the 1980s. When Conor's parents transfer him from an expensive private school to a rough inner-city high school, he becomes infatuated with the mysterious girl (Lucy Boynton) who lives across the street. Conor tries to impress her by lying that he is in a band, and consequently finds he must form one.

This story line sounds familiar: Boy meets girl, boy tries to impress girl, boy and girl fall in love with comedic and/or touching hiccups along the way, right? But this is whereSing Streetexceeds expectations. Romance is an important aspect of the film and contributes to Conor's motivations, but the movie takes unexpected directions and is ultimately more meaningful than its romantic parts.

Sing Streetis first and foremost about how important music can be during the difficult years of early adolescence. 80s music by likes of Depeche Mode, the Cure, and Duran Duran punctuate the film and help Conor digest increasingly tense relationships with his parents and his school's sadistic principal. He uses music to find himself, both artistically and aesthetically, and often with comedic results.

Sing Street's characters clearly deal with adolescent internal crises yet remain funny, tough, and realistic enough to save the film from banality. Each character has a level of depth unusual for teenage movies, their difficult realities only focused upon long enough to make them realistic and instill sympathy in audiences. Backstories were explored, but never to an emotionally exhausting degree.

It was especially refreshing to watch the relationship between Conor and his brother, Brendan (Jack Reynor). Brendan is a moody, perpetually stoned college dropout with limited screen-time, yet Reynor excels in this role to such a degree that Brendan is one of the most likable characters in the film. The way he communicates with Conor is attentive and compassionate, and Reynor manifests this verbally and nonverbally. Facial expressions and body language communicate his inner conflicts, even when he is trying to hide them.

Brendan's less-than-glamorous qualities could easily have made him irritating, but instead he was relatable and emotionally affecting. He is especially gripping in the final scene, when he expresses both regret over his own life's direction and excitement for his brother's future. The bond between the brothers is strong and far from simple, and was the most touching relationship in the film.

Symmetrical cinematography, match-on-action shots, blunt dialogue, and precocious young characters remind audiences of Wes Anderson films, but with a gritty touch. Here, John Carney has managed to make a movie that is at once tough, funny, nostalgic, and heart-warming. I encourage everyone to see Sing Street: there is something here for everyone.

Shifting between campy grisliness and gruesome brutality without ever dipping far enough into either to be interesting, Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room slumps beneath its indecisive nature. Saulnier brings back the precise cinematography of his previous film, Blue Ruin, to coat the story of a punk band stumbling across a violent backroom misunderstanding with the hazy atmosphere that made Blue Ruin’s mysteries engaging, but digging into the drawn-out conflict between a pair of families benefits a lot more from meditative camera movements than the immediacy of a contained club brawl. Once machetes start slicing into bodies, the lingering shots of their outturned organs give Green Room a feeling of cruel sobriety.

Saulnier seems aware of how unpleasant these scenes can get, but his attempt to balance out their sour demeanor by pumping them full of hokey dialogue makes the moments of levity undermine the story’s tension. Being held hostage in a grimy venue filled with skinheads and fresh corpses should be enough to stiffen the most hardened members of the band, so it’s hard to feel a sense of danger when the captives are cracking jokes seconds after their friend has been executed in front of them. If Saulnier had found ways to give any of these characters some dramatic weight past their witty remarks, his liberal disposal of them as the band works their way towards an escape could have been an exhilarating fight for survival, but he seems to regard each one as a collection of limbs to be hacked off or blown away.

Not that the rough acting gives us any reason to believe otherwise, with only a few characters being brought past screaming whenever a weapon flashes into view or wandering around solemnly. Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner, and Joe Cole comprise the band and, despite being given the most screen time, are indistinguishable past their temperaments ranging from volatility to cowering frailness, making the progressive thinning of their group feel like the dreary procession of assorted deaths found in the most indulgent horror movies. The majority of the cast grind through the film in a similar manner; Imogen Poots is practically apathetic despite being a young skinhead thrust into the fight alongside the band after her friend is murdered and Patrick Stewart seems uninterested in anything besides getting the growing pile of bodies in his club swept out the door.

Mark Webber and Macon Blair create the most interesting characters in the movie as two skinheads defecting from the group for different reasons, but they’re sidelined until the climax. Their clunky additions to the story and the inconsistent tone of the film give the impression that Saulnier may not have fully figured out what experience he wants us to have, with him showcasing how gratuitously he can rip apart some kids to cover up any signs of the movie’s dissonance. Green Roomfeels like a step backwards from Blue Ruin, forgetting the kind of dense world that pulled us into that film’s story and leaving little reason for us to pry into its shallow and confused one.

I usually don’t keep my expectations high when I hear about a movie that seems to have a fairly gimmicky concept. I’ve found that movies like this typically have little substance and depth, attempting to draw in audiences sheerly though mild curiosity regarding the concept of the film. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a perfect example of a movie that rides solely on the fact that it hopes people will be interested in seeing the two heroes fight, and its writer and director seem to have decided it was a good idea to have no real substance to back that idea up. However, I’m not here to talk about that mess.

Elvis & Nixon, on the surface, seems like it would similarly not work. The concept seems excessively gimmicky and underwhelming. What was it like when Elvis Presley met Richard Nixon? All the concept did, for me, reminded me of the old Scooby-Doo cartoons where he gang teamed up with the Harlem Globetrotters or the Three Stooges. The idea seemed like the kind of thing that would hold an audience’s attention for about ten minutes, but would trail off toward the back-end when the film realized it had no substance.​Thankfully, Elvis & Nixon fared far better than Batman v. Superman, deciding that a movie with little in the way of conflict or struggle had to have interesting characters and a pleasing aesthetic to be worth watching. Elvis & Nixonis carried by its leads, who are played by Michael Shannon (Man of Steeland Boardwalk Empire) and Kevin Spacey (American Beautyand House of Cards). The performances from both of these actors are excellent, as they don’t merely play caricatures of the iconic figures they represent. Neither of them really do an impression of their real-life counterpart, nor do they play up the iconic lines that these two are known for. They both created characters rather than stereotypes, which makes the movie far more entertaining and, at times, very funny.​The movie has the added benefit of oozing style. Taking place in December of 1970, the way everything looks, sounds and feels in this movie is quintessential to the time period. I’m a sucker for movies that can truly take you back to the era that they are emulating, and Elvis & Nixon really made me feel like I was back in the time of Woodstock.

Unfortunately, the issue still remains that the movie lacks substantial conflict. The film follows Elvis, who fears that the youth of America have been infected by the drug and hippie culture of the day. He wants to meet with President Nixon so that he can be issued a badge to be a Federal Agent-at-Large, busting up drug rings and saving lives. After what amounts to very little struggle, Elvis gets what he wants and the meeting with the president ensues.

And that’s pretty much the whole film. Carried by its style and lead actors, I fear that the movie doesn’t have a lot of longevity. I enjoyed watching it, but I don’t think I’d ever want to see it again. Without a central driving conflict, or really any arc for the characters, the movie feels like fluff. Tasty fluff, but still fluff.

I’ve been a fan of The Jungle Book ever since I saw an animated Mowgli on the TV screen, running around the jungle with this menagerie of animals that he calls friends and family. Later I came across the source material, Rudyard Kipling’s novel. A masterpiece by all means. Well here’s a thing, every time movie makers pick up a story that is so widely followed and loved, they risk the chance of ruining it or not living up to the harsh expectation of fans. Let me ease your nerves by saying that this movie takes the chance and unlike many (that failed), it emerges victorious (or so I believe it shall).

For those who are not well versed with the story, let me bring you up to speed. Mowgli is a human child who was found and raised by a pack of wolves. He grows up learning the ways of the jungle along with Bagheera, a black panther. But as the forest learns about his presence, danger arises in form of Shere Khan, a tiger who has seen the brunt of man and now wants revenge.

I still wonder how such a elementary story can make for an experience so lasting, that I’m still in awe of it. The Jungle Book for all parts but Mowgli is CGI. But the special effects, sound design, and voice acting is all so immaculate that you sit there and stare at computer generated imagery for two hours and never doubt it being real, not for a second. The jungle makes you want to leave the comfort of your seat. The animals seem larger than life (sometimes literally), like the majestic elephants, the stealthy wild cats, the united wolf pack. It is no doubt that the movie makes for one of the best adaptations of the book, since it is not just the story but the characters coming alive.

Of course, you are thinking that this is just another visual spectacular. Enter the star-studded cast. With the big budgets and bigger banners (Disney), the association of big names has become inevitable. But rarely do you see a cast that seems almost tailor-made. May it be Sir Ben Kingsley as strict Bagheera or Idris Elba as the ruthless and fierce Shere Khan or Lupita Nyong’o as caring and protective mother Raksha, the actors fit their characters like a glove. And not to forget the star of the show, Neel Sethi, who is adorable, smart, funny and everything you’d imagine Mowgli to be. It it this powerhouse of a cast that brings characters to life and makes you feel immersed throughout your movie experience.

No matter how much i pick each aspect of the movie and explain how it has been done perfectly, I cannot miss the ringmaster: one of the most underrated directors, Jon Favreau. Favreau is the brain behind many movies like Iron Man and Chef (both personal favorites). It is a lesser known fact that he is one of people responsible for jumpstarting the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His work on The Jungle Book not only stands at par with his previous hits but even exceeds them at some levels. My vote is with the guy who can make me watch ‘animated animals talking and a jungle-raised human child’ without disbelief. Go Favreau!

I could keep going on about how [I think] the movie is perfect, but something tells me you are already convinced. So go grab your tickets and some popcorn and get set to run with the pack.

​The first Monday in May: one of the days of the year that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is always closed and the name of Andrew Rossi's insightful documentary detailing the creation of the Met’s Costume Institute’s most successful fashion exhibition to date, last year’s China: Though the Looking Glass.

The film opens on the 2015 Met Gala’s red carpet, an annual event intended to raise the entire year’s funds for the Costume Institute; it is slow and ethereal, suspending us in the intersection of the worlds of fashion, celebrity, and art. It is here where they introduce to what seems like the central question of the film: should fashion be considered art?The film makes its case, arguing fashion as art, following a chronological structure as they count down to the Met Gala and the exhibit’s opening and following the Costume Institute’s curator Andrew Bolton through the curative process of this year’s exhibition. It’s not fast paced, but not slow, either, almost like how you would move through museum, examining each piece, then leisurely stepping to the side while still full of intent.

Despite the fact that the filmmakers seemed to set the story in the film up as if they were arguing fashion as art, I would argue that they were, in actuality, arguing fashion as relevant, as legitimate, as important. And I would argue that they succeeded in just that.

They demonstrated how fashion is a springboard for conversation and thought by using it to organically explore several weighty topics, including the expansion of the definition of art, stereotypes, racism, gender inequalities, shifting gender roles, globalization, sexuality, the power of media, celebrity culture, and more, constantly weaving in and out of the central storyline in several different directions. However, even in all of the deviations, the film never lost focus; the filmmakers always brought it back, always connected each storyline and topic in a successful and effective way. Some of the film’s strongest points even came from the deviations: a powerful direct contrast of Anna Wintour and the 'dragon lady' stereotype demonstrating the empowerment of women in fashion, a brief fashion biography of Bolton in which he leads the audience to reflect on, as he did, the “power of fashion to confront gender and sexuality,” a dissection of “Orientalism” in the West. Each topic has a purpose and a direct link to fashion as a whole and the exhibition specifically.

The film ends with a significant amount of time spent at the year’s Met Gala, returning to the red carpet, allowing the audience to revel in the pomp and spectacle of the event. We follow not only several celebrity guests as the walk through the exhibit for the first time, but also Bolton, in a grand, yet elegant, cinematic moment as he walks through the space of his creation, his obsession for the past eight months. It is a triumphant moment, the entire sequence of events portrayed in the movie leading up to this event concluding in splendor and completeness. ​The First Monday in May used a cultural event that some could render insignificant and instead proved its relevance by exploring several substantial and culturally relevant subjects, a technique that could cause others to lose focus, but instead was handled here with deftness and care. The filmmakers prove that fashion is more than just fancy, a vapid commodity that says nothing of value about the world we live in. They never lose focus, but instead prove that fashion has the power to incite meaningful and necessary discourse in a way that touches all everyday each time they get dressed.

The year was 1966, and drug-addled jazz trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker was playing himself in a biopic about his life. A gifted musician, Baker rose to prominence in the 1950s, playing alongside legends like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. Despite his success, like many great artists before and after him, Baker struggled with addiction. In the midst of a heroin deal, Baker gets brutally beaten by his drug dealer and suffers serious injuries to the mouth that destroyed his embouchure. He lost his ability to play the trumpet, and therefore lost his inner identity.

Now, the year is 2016, and Ethan Hawke (Boyhood, Predestination) is playing Chet Baker in a biopic. Born to Be Blue chronicles Baker’s journey to fight addiction, and rebuild his life and career. The film begins on the set of Baker’s biopic in 1966. He falls for the woman playing his ex-wife in the film, an African-American actress and musician named Jane (Carmen Ejogo, Selma). The two begin a tumultuous love affair that ultimately helps Baker through his darkest days, as he tries to rebuild his musical career and stage a comeback.

Director Robert Budreau takes an interesting approach in telling Baker’s story. The film alternates between real-time, color scenes of the present (1966) and scenes from the biopic shot in black and white piecing together Baker’s past. Because Ejogo plays Baker’s girlfriend in the present and the actress playing Baker’s ex-wife in the biopic scenes, it got a little confusing. It was, however, a unique approach to telling a linear story that brought something new to the table. Budreau’s directing style is pretty run-of-the-mill, and doesn’t necessarily let the actors shine as much as they could. Hawke, for example, excels much more noticeably under the direction of Richard Linklater. Maybe I’m biased because of how much I love both of them and the art they create together, but Hawke always seems to do his best work with Linklater. This performance as Chet Baker was relatively new territory for Hawke, to which he brought his natural acting ability. Not my favorite role of his, but he exuded intensity and emotion in this difficult part.

Born to Be Blue is a movie made about Chet Baker for people who want to know more about Chet Baker. Other movies about music can be geared toward a broader audience, like fans of a certain genre, but this film fails at that. For fans of Chet Baker, this film is perfect. For fans of jazz, it’s pretty good. For film buffs who don’t like jazz, it may not even be enjoyable. Luckily, I have an appreciation for jazz music, as well as Ethan Hawke, so I was able to watch the entire film without any difficulty. Born to Be Blue tells the story of every tortured artist and their struggle with the vicious cycle of addiction. The reality of addiction should not be discounted, but the film doesn’t bring anything new to that general story that’s been told again and again. I had high hopes for this film, but ultimately it fell short of my expectations.

Have you ever gotten that feeling, while watching a movie or a television show, that you’ve seen what you are watching before? You are convinced that what you’re watching isn’t new to you, and yet you can’t wrap your head around where or when you have seen it. Perhaps it was on in the background while you were doing something else or you stumbled upon it late at night and don’t remember the details because you were barely awake when you saw it. Either way, what you are watching feels so familiar that you know exactly what is going to happen before it does.

This is exactly how I felt watching Demolition. Now, it is impossible for me to have seen this film before now, with it being a preview screening. However, Demolition felt so familiar that I mapped out the entire story in my head before it unfolded on-screen. The movie goes through all the paces that movies with a similar story would, leaving nearly nothing original for the audience to be shocked by.

Demolition follows Davis (played by Jake Gyllenhaal of End of Watchfame), an investment banker whose wife Julie tragically dies in a car accident. This causes Davis to rethink his entire life, uprooting whatever he once thought was important and replacing it with what feels right. This pairs him with Karen (Naomi Watts of Birdman), a customer service representative at a vending machine company, with whom he forms a strange but endearing friendship.

My major issue with the film is how piecemealed the whole thing feels. Every element of the movie seems to be very closely emulating some other similar drama, which saves little space for imagination or innovation. Gyllenhaal’s performance, while quite good, feels like something he has done before. Davis is a socially awkward and bottled up person, and the death of his wife allows him to become more of a free spirit. Imagine his role in Nightcrawler, but remove all the creepiness and tension which made that performance interesting. His relationship with Karen feels like a watered-down version of the relationship between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannsson’s characters in Lost in Translation. Most other elements of the film seemed equally familiar.

Now, if you don’t mind the familiarity of the plot and characters, the film is quite good otherwise. The performances are good, the cinematography interesting enough and the editing does a solid job of making you feel like you are in the mind of a man who doesn’t have a firm grasp on anything. Unfortunately, for me at least, this is not enough to make a satisfying movie. The story and characters are too familiar to be interesting, which ends up making the drama of the situation feel lackluster. If some of the generic nature of the story could have been trimmed off and replaced with a more original story, Demolition could have been a great film. But the movie suffers far too heavily from its bland nature to reach its potential.

The term “spiritual sequel” is finding it’s way into more and more thinkpieces. Think of the phrase as what Fury Road is to the original Mad Max, or what Creedis to Rocky. These are movie “reboots” that compel you to forget everything that happened in the interim between that great, first of the series until now, typically characterized with a renewed sense of energy and direction. It’s an exclusive category of movies that not only do their predecessor justice, but even challenge their predecessor’s nostalgic status and preconceived greatness because they’re just that good.

Aaaand, here walks in Everybody Wants Some!! (the inclusion of the exclamation points is very important). Entering the club with a confident swagger and beer in hand, Everybody Wants Some!! is a spiritual sequel that surpasses the holy, beloved justice of Dazed and Confused. Don’t get me wrong: I love the IDGAF, last day of school romp that is Dazed and Confused, but Everybody Wants Some!! is a stunning college party successor that evokes the same feelings as it’s origin and more. It’s all the ceremony of getting laid with no repercussions- and why should there be any?

On the way to happy hour at the regular Jolly Fox bar, brand new university baseball recruit Jake (Blake Jenner) sits smushed between his teammates in a shiny silver Chevy. Ladies man and upperclassman Finnegan (the *amazing* Glen Powell) sits up front and pulls over to flirt with some freshmen females moving in, until one of the girls utters “I like the quiet guy in the backseat,” eyeing Jake’s clueless face. The interaction is sexy, cheeky, exciting, adventurous: it’s a representation of all college has to offer, in just a wink from a hot brunette.

And that’s all college and Everybody Wants Some!! is about really- the conquest of “getting some” while we’re still young and unhinged. The baseball team boys travel from disco to rodeo, underground punk show to muddy jock party to theatre kids costume party, all with the goal of not going to bed alone at night. It’s a mindless concept that some audiences have criticized, saying the “plot” feels “airheaded,” but the sheer glee of such an animalistic concept in a college setting surrounded by Joni Mitchell posters and fridges scarce of everything but beer is enough to make the movie feel like a true escape-from-reality experience. With every actor being their absolute best, the infectious 80s music, and all the outfits ranging from male crop-tops to cheesy disco shirts your dad now hides in the back of his closet, Everybody Wants Some!!welcomes you back to the glory days of being on the baseball team for just a couple hours. Even as a current college student who’s living the time of her life as we speak, it’s inexplicably fun to watch director Richard Linklater exactly pinpoint the college atmosphere down to the 15-second bong hits.

With Boyhood and the Before series, I would always summarize Linklater’s filmography to being about human growth, but I’ve realized his movies are more than just that. Linklater’s career is about living- with no rules in Dazed and Confused, with love in the Before series, and in the moment with Everybody Wants Some!!. Never is there any thought of the past or future in Everybody Wants Some!!- only Linklater’s ticking clock that occasionally pops up with a countdown ‘til the first day of classes, which is more of a plot device than anything else really- and it’s absolutely freeing from the weight we get caught up with in our day-to-day lives. And it’s also what makes Everybody Wants Some!! so fitting as a spiritual sequel- it’s a chance to escape all preconceived notions and pretend like you were/are actually cool in college. Everybody’s welcome here and *cue the Van Halen song* everybody wants some…!!

After seeing the new Richard Linklater film Everybody Wants Some!!, I got the opportunity to sit down with three stars of the film - Blake Jenner, Tyler Hoechlin, and Will Brittain - to talk about the film and their experiences in a roundtable interview at the Eliot Hotel. We talked about Linklater, McConaughey, Burger King and more...check it out!

​Q: Obviously it must’ve been incredible to work with Richard Linklater. Did you ever think that you would get to a place in your career where you would have that opportunity? Because he’s so known for launching careers, so is that something you were hoping for?

Blake Jenner: Yeah, going from, you know, first moving out to Los Angeles and like working at a Burger King and a parrot shop (laughs), and auditioning for Best Buy commercials that you get cut out of… It’s pretty incredible to be able to say along with these guys, working with these guys alone, like you never think you’re gonna work with such an awesome group of people, but then you add Rick to the mix, and it’s like a dream. It sounds cheesy, but it’s like a dream come true, one hundred percent. To be able to say that we worked with that director who’s easily one of the greatest directors of our country and time in general…

Will Brittain: Totally, I mean, it’s a myth really. It’s a myth to be able to work with directors like that.

BJ: Yeah, you always hope, like hopefully I’ll get to work with somebody like that. That would be a dream. But you have no expectations so when it happens, it’s that much sweeter.

WB: For me, too, growing up in Texas, Richard Linklater’s THE guy from Texas, you know.

BJ: He’s the unsolicited mayor. (laughs)

WB: (laughs) One hundred percent. And you know, you look at McConaughey…every Texas actor that’s a male and reasonably athletic, I think, looks at McConaughey and says, “Oh man, that’s what I could do! If only someone found me, I could be the next McConaughey.” And then you get found by Richard Linklater, and you’re like “Fuck! Alright!” So it’s cool.

Q: So what was the overall atmosphere of being on set? Because the movie was very free flowing and loose and everything.

WB: Yeah, probably exactly what you’d expect.

Tyler Hoechlin: Yeah, what you see in the movie. We felt like the hard work, if you can really call it hard work because it was so much fun, the hard work was done in the rehearsal process beforehand when we spent a couple weeks with Rick on his property. We stayed in a bunkhouse, so every morning it was breakfast together, and then we’d do rehearsals for dance or practice for baseball, or we’d do a read-through of the script, some days sticking closer with the script and some days kinda throwing in ideas and thoughts. And we played with that for so long that by the time we actually started shooting, we kinda felt like we had already made the movie. We had done the scenes enough and we knew what, as Rick would call them, our ‘greatest hits’ were, so we knew what we were gonna do. So at that point it was just having everyone else show up, give us the clothes, do the hair, and actually having cameras set up to capture it, so on set it was just fun.

Q: In terms of the preparation for these roles, I feel like with a big cast like this it could’ve been easy to kind of lose a face in the crowd. But everybody has such a distinguished personality which I found really great. Was that there immediately with the script, or was that in the rehearsal process and you got to bring parts of yourself to it?

WB: Absolutely the latter, and that’s a tribute to everybody. Not just to the guys who didn’t have that many lines, which were many because there were probably only four or five characters that were like bigger characters, but also a tribute to the guys who were the bigger characters who were wise enough and generous enough to realize that their lines would be better served if someone else said them. Or that their moment would be better served if someone else were included in it, which really speaks to the humility of everyone involved.

BJ: And everybody understood when a line was given to somebody else, or when something was cut down...everybody was there for each other. There’s not one person in the whole rehearsal process that was like, “That’s mine! I want that, that’s gonna be my line.”

TH: Coming from baseball, I can always throw a baseball metaphor in there (laughs), but it’s kinda like that. It’s like everyone wanted to be the role player, and no one wanted to be the guy to come up and hit the homerun, like everyone was happy to be the guy that put down the sacrifice.

BJ: It was just as satisfying to help someone shine as it was to shine yourself.

Q: Did any of you play sports in high school or college, and did you have a similar experience to what you showed in the movie? Did it reflect what you actually experienced or was it different in any way?

TH: I played baseball through college, so this was kinda going back to the glory days for me and reliving it, and having a little bit more fun than I had in college. I was the very, very focused athlete. You know, I would party on my one party day that we had, but I was also like okay, if I don’t have class, I’m in the batting cage. So this was time for me to do that with a little bit more fun.

WB: I was a pretty good football player in high school and a pretty good track athlete, but I was a terrible baseball player (laughs), so I stopped playing that around the age of fourteen. So it was nice to like come back in and play baseball, and also get taught baseball by guys like Tyler...because he could have [played pro ball].Q: For each of you, what do you think the movie is sort of, at its core, about?

TH: I think it’s not being afraid of being who you are. My favorite line in the movie is Willoughby’s line to him (points to Jenner) when they’re shooting pool, which is just like, “Be weird!” He’s like, you know, (All three of them recite in unison) “Always bring who you are, never who they want. That’s when it’s fun.” I thought that’s such a great, new way of saying “be yourself,” because it is, it’s so much more fun when you embrace who you are and what you are as opposed to trying to fit into some box that somebody else might put you in. You thrive that way. So to me, that’s the theme that always hits me the hardest when I watch it.

BJ: Yeah, I completely agree with him. It’s like, you know, life is much, much more fun and you get more out of it when you’re not just watching yourself and monitoring what you’re saying or how you’re being or where you want to fit in… And I also think, there are two things I always say and I could be completely wrong but this is what I get out of it: It’s just so timeless and it shows that all the external things change, clothes change and music changes and all that stuff changes, but growing up and finding out what you love, finding out who you are, having a good time with your friends, that never changes. And also, I always say, ‘cause I think everyone here has their times when they’re like focused about the future or thinking about something they regret from the past or something. And what’s cool about this movie is that there isn’t such a huge plot, there isn’t like a car crash coming down a waterfall and there’s mermaids that are gonna catch you and like make out with the dudes in the car… You know, it’s like a slice of life where you just can’t help but be there with the guys, so it’s really like a testament to how important it is to live in the now nowadays with how connected we are and how easy it is to get distracted.

I had a great time talking to these guys - the three of them are immensely kind and talented. Go see Everybody Wants Some!!, in theaters now!